Wide as the Waters: the story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired

Christian Century, Nov 7, 2001 by Susan M. Felch

Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired. By Benson Bobrick. Simon & Schuster, 379 pp., $26.00.

THE ELDERLY churchgoer who declares that "if the King James Bible was good enough for St. Paul, then it's good enough for me" has long since passed into legend, but the tale of our English Bibles remains a fascinating narrative, replete with heroes, villains, plot twists and a surprising denouement. Benson Bobrick captures the romance by focusing on the heroic early Bible translators. He appreciates the Bible's history prior to the 1611 Authorized Version, a history that stretches from John Wycliffe through William Tyndale to the Genevan translators and the Elizabethan bishops.

In Bobrick's Wide as the Waters, we meet Tyndale, muffled in a cloak, making his way to a clandestine meeting with Stephen Vaughan, the king's emissary. Though Tyndale declares himself a loyal English subject, six years later he is tied to a stake, strangled and burned as a heretic.

Later John Rogers obtained a license from the king for what is essentially a completed Tyndalian Bible, and still later Matthew Parker parceled out biblical texts to his bishops to create a new authorized version for Queen Elizabeth I. By the time we reach the 17th century, we are ready for the spectacle of James I, newly arrived from Scotland, lecturing his bishops on the state of the English church and deciding to sponsor his own revised translation.

Bobrick, trained in English and comparative literature and the author of histories ranging from the American Revolution to the reign of Ivan the Terrible, knows how to engage readers with a rollicking narrative. He makes us care about the two Wycliffite versions of the Bible (one by Nicholas Hereford, who later renounced his association with the reformer, and the other by John Purvey), and he draws us into the deliberations and the personalities of the six translation companies entrusted with the production of the King James Version.

Along the way we master the plot twists of this grand narrative: the 14th-century manuscript Wycliffite Bibles, based on the Latin Vulgate, give way to Tyndale's freshly translated New Testament of 1526. By 1535, a year before Tyndale is executed for his vernacular audacity, Miles Coverdale oversees the release of the entire Bible, which is dedicated to the king. Coverdale's "pastiche," based on Tyndale's own translations of the Old and New Testaments as well as the Vulgate and contemporary Latin and German translations, generates a slew of competing versions: the so-called "Matthew's Bible" of 1537, the first to be licensed by King Henry VIII; the officially sanctioned Great Bible of 1539, reprinted in 1540 with Thomas Cranmer's sonorous preface; and the short-lived Taverner revision.

Edward VI's reign sees the enshrinement of passages from the Great Bible in the Book of Common Prayer, while Queen Mary's return to the Roman Catholic Church encourages the English exiles in Geneva to produce their own translation in 1560. Elizabeth's authorized Bishop's Bible (1568) is largely a frustrated attempt to supplant this popular Geneva Bible, whose famous marginal notes are not entirely supportive of monarchical power. Although the KJV, another royal version pitted against the Geneva Bible, ultimately wins the day, it does so largely by dint of economic power rather than religious or literary persuasion.

Bobrick is a consummate teacher who summarizes complex historical and linguistic movements without reducing them to caricature. His biography of the Book becomes a guided tour through church and English history, as well as an argument for his subtitle: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired. That revolution is specifically the British civil war of the 1640s, but more generally the inexorable social movement toward democracy.

Bobrick asserts, rather than demonstrates, that the English Reformation and vernacular Bible "established the ground and right" for free discussion. As fascinating as his anecdotal history is, it suffers from the "great men" approach, with its drift toward hagiography and the inevitable omission not only of important people but also of institutional forces that lie beyond individual control.

Alister McGrath, while alert to the well-honed anecdote, is more carefully attuned to social history. In In the Beginning he surveys the economic impact of print technology on the production of English translations and sets the English Bible within its European context. Unfortunately, he is less attentive to the British context. He dismisses the Wycliffite Bibles as inaccurate and crams the 16th-century Bible translators into two chapters. However, he does acknowledge Tyndale as "the most formative influence" on the KJV and recognizes that the 17th-century translators "saw themselves as standing on the shoulders of giants."

It is useful to read Bobrick and McGrath in tandem, the former supplying the personal touch, the latter weaving his story on a larger loom. The two books also demonstrate the role of historical interpretation. Both discuss the life of John Bois, who remained the rector of Boxworth while serving as a KJV translator for four years. But Bobrick sees him as "singularly conscientious" for holding down two jobs, while McGrath points out that "he needed little encouragement to neglect his parish duties ... for the academic delights of Cambridge."